Seeking Eden Read online

  “We could trade with them,” Avriham put in.

  Ephraim shook his head. “What do we have to trade? We make nothing we don’t use. We have no extra. We have nothing of value to provide to anyone else, why would what we have left over be of any more use to any of them than to us?”

  “They could join us.” Livna shrugged. “The offer was extended, long ago. Freshen our DNA pools. Bring in new skills. The Bridgers have no problem.”

  “The Bridgers force people to join them, or they kill them. They take from others, they don’t give. And most importantly…those others are not like us.” Ephraim shook his head again.

  Solomon snorted lightly. “Why not? Because their ancestors were goyim and ours were not? Do you really think it was keeping the sabbath that let more of us survive when most of them didn’t?”

  “I do. Tell me you don’t,” Ephraim told the other man with a glare. “You, a member of the Beit Din, to say such things.”

  Solomon only shrugged. Livna looked away. Even Avriham wouldn’t meet Ephraim’s gaze.

  “We’re the Chosen. It’s why we, of all the people in this city, continued having children when the others were no longer blessed. Its why as they died out, we lived on. Yes, we’ve brought others into our community as time passed. We’ve always welcomed strangers. Of course. But it’s because of our faith. Our ability to adapt without losing our laws and traditions. That’s why we are now some two-thousand strong and surviving here in peace when the rest of the world is still empty or battling against each other.”

  The rest of the room was silent. Ephraim looked at them all, then scrubbed at his face. So weary. “So. Let’s talk about what we can do to make things better.”

  “Maybe you should ask Adonai to send us a miracle,” muttered Avriham.

  If only that could happen.

  −7-

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” Tobin snapped. “My name isn’t James Bond.”

  “See? See? I told you he’s a liar! And a man who lies will be a thief!”

  That was Asaph again. He seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in trying to aggravate Tobin. After three hours of the old man’s gabbing, Tobin now just tuned him out. That only seemed to agitate the old Gatherer so he tried even harder.

  “Asaph, for the love of Ha-Shem, shut up!” The woman said. Apparently the old man was succeeding in aggravating somebody, if not Tobin.

  “He has a point, Zmorah,” a man called Gavish said, though he too looked fed-up with Asaph’s blabber.

  “Yeah, on the top of his head,” Tobin muttered, and stifled a laugh. He was exhausted and getting punchy, as Old Ma would have said. Laughter didn’t seem to be the most appropriate reaction to the situation. He could tell it confused them, and that was just fine with him.

  The one with the white hair spoke next. “You did tell us your name was James Bond.”

  Tobin groaned and hung his head. “We’ve been over this already.”

  “You were lying,” Zmorah said. “He’s lying, Levi.”

  “Yes,” Tobin said with an impatient sigh. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and glanced longingly at his bedroll. In another few hours it would be light, and he doubted he’d get any sleep then, either. “But only because…shit.”

  Raised eyebrows from the lot of them. Apparently cursing went over as well as lying did. Tobin coughed, wishing he’d had more experience with people. Old Pa had cursed like a sailor, Old Ma was fond of saying, but Tobin didn’t quite know how a sailor cursed.

  He tried again. “I was being sarcastic.”

  The gatherer with the dark skin was Ari. He seemed to be the leader. Now he looked at Tobin thoughtfully, his black brows knitted over eyes as dark as the night outside.

  “If you lie about your name, how can we trust anything else you tell us?”

  “I don’t know,” Tobin said. “But I told you I lied about the name. I mean, that I was being sarcastic about it. Anyway, why would I lie to you about where I got my stuff?”

  “Because you’re a nasty, dirty liar!” Asaph crowed. A look from the others shushed him, but Tobin could tell the old man wouldn’t stay silent for long. He didn’t have it in him to be quiet.

  They called the quietest and youngest gatherer Dov. “You might lie because you stole these things.”

  Tobin looked around the dirty, bare room. They’d taken him into another building. The room was vast and dilapidated. Huge stone pillars rose in even rows, and far in the back was a long, high desk. They’d told him it had once been a hotel. Aside from the six gatherers and Tobin, and his belongings, the room was empty.

  “From who? From where?” Tobin pointed around the room. “Places like this?”

  Tobin got up and kicked his backpack until it fell over. Everything inside spilled out, clanging on the hard stone floor. Echoes filled the room for several minutes before dying away.

  “Do you see stuff like this here?” He glared at his captors. “Huh? Do you see anything?”

  “There’s lotsa stuff to be gathered in the city.” Tall and hugely muscled, the man called Luz had been the one to drag Tobin inside the building.

  “New like this?” Tobin knew he was getting in the other man’s face and didn’t care. “Unused?”

  Zmorah and Ari shared a look. “No,” she said. “That’s why we’re confused.”

  “Well, hot damn,” Tobin said, more to see her flinch than because he really wanted to swear. “What do you want me to say? I told you. I found this stuff in a huge warehouse off the Transcon. There were enough goods in there to feed and clothe a thousand people, probably. All of it unused, and all of it good. If I could’ve taken more of it with me, I would have.”

  Ari grunted. “We work six days out of seven, eleven months out of twelve, to find food and clothes and necessary items for the Tribe. If this place really exists…”

  Dov sighed. “We’d be set for life!”

  Zmorah bent to paw through his belongings. The group had been through it all ten times already, but Tobin didn’t stop her. He thought she just might want to touch the things again. He knew how she felt.

  Tobin couldn’t see much of her in the lantern light, but he thought she was about his age. He couldn’t tell whether or not she was pretty…hell. What did he know about pretty, anyway? What he’d seen in pictures.

  “There are places in the city we haven’t covered yet.” Zmorah caressed the fleece jacket. Her voice sounded wistful. “Lots of apartments. Lots of offices. Buildings we haven’t explored beyond the fifth or sixth floors. And beyond that, we could branch out to the houses on the long island…”

  She paused and her voice broke as though she might cry. “But to find it all in one place! And looking like this! I can’t believe it!” To Tobin’s surprise, she did start to cry.

  “It’s hard for us,” Ari said. “The Tribe is two thousand strong now, James.”

  “Tobin,” he corrected.

  The older man stared at him, then smiled. “Tobin. We have two thousand people living here, in a city that once housed millions. And yet, after only a few hundred years, we’re struggling to feed and clothe ourselves. We have huge storerooms filled with goods, but they can only last so long with a population our size. We look for more, all the time. We go into these old buildings and we search the places people used to live. Anything we find, we gather. It’s how we survive.”

  Tobin thought of Eastport, and how he’d been alone for so long. They hadn’t gone hungry there, but life hadn’t been easy. He couldn’t imagine living in this city of stone and pavement and rubbish. How could anything survive without sunshine and grass? And water?

  “Why don’t you leave?”

  “Leave!” Gavish said. “And go where? We’ve lived here for hundreds of years!”

  “We have a way of life, Tobin,” Ari explained. “We have a government, and schools, and housing. We’ve adapted our territory to our comfort and well-being. Asking the Tribe to give all that up and start fresh would be